GhostBusters!

By PingPong

Enlighted (4142)

PingPong's picture

02-01-2019, 22:10

the GhostBusters game feature a big car running on the city. The animation is very smooth and the big car moves fast from right to left. Someone know how activision did this effect? Is the car made up of hw sprites or tiles or a combination of two?

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By Manuel

Ascended (19470)

Manuel's picture

03-01-2019, 00:00

Try in openMSX and disable the sprites. From the looks of it, the car itself is all tiles, the rest is sprites (e.g. moving road stripes). The logo on the car's roof is sprites.

By JohnHassink

Ambassador (5672)

JohnHassink's picture

03-01-2019, 07:27

Oh, how I loved that movie, and the game, and the cartoon based on it. Anyone remember that?

By journey

Hero (575)

journey's picture

03-01-2019, 09:25

Ooooh...I remember quite well the movie, the music and the game... Cool

By CASDuino

Champion (341)

CASDuino's picture

03-01-2019, 11:25

I always thought it a shame that they managed speech with the other versions but not the MSX.

By larsthe18th

Master (189)

larsthe18th's picture

03-01-2019, 21:34

If you want to do some tests with the other 3 cars, you can create your own bank account with a shit load of money on the following website.
Ghostbusters Password generator for MSX, C64, AppleII, PC-jr and Atari XE/LE
Ghostbusters Password generator for ZX-Spectrum
Ghostbusters Password generator for Amstrad CPC

Enjoy

By FiXato

Scribe (1743)

FiXato's picture

04-01-2019, 06:07

CASDuino wrote:

I always thought it a shame that they managed speech with the other versions but not the MSX.

Not only that, but we also didn't get the last two gameplay segments in the Zuul building that the SMS port got. Skip to 19:20 to see what I mean.
I at first thought we also didn't get the Marshmallow Man sequence, but after rewatching my quick playthrough of Ghostbusters for the MSX it looks like we at least did get that. Such as shame though the MSX often got lazy Spectrum ports rather than ports that actually made use of the MSX's capabilities. No wonder some people think MSX is incapable of things like smooth scrolling, or thinks it also suffers from colour/attribute clash...

By martijn

Supporter (1)

martijn's picture

06-10-2019, 16:02

larsthe18th wrote:

If you want to do some tests with the other 3 cars, you can create your own bank account with a shit load of money on the following website.
Ghostbusters Password generator for MSX, C64, AppleII, PC-jr and Atari XE/LE
Ghostbusters Password generator for ZX-Spectrum
Ghostbusters Password generator for Amstrad CPC

Enjoy

Unfortunately the ZX Spectrum site is hacked. so I wrote another generator, one where you can also type your own name.
Make use of a so called C# Fiddler to add the code to run.
Use the next code:
from this link: or use below code yourself
https://dotnetfiddle.net/xhDj1M

using System;
					
public class Program
{
	public static void Main()
	{
		Console.WriteLine(ZxSpectrumGhostBusterCode("YOURNAME", 100000));
	}
	
	static string ZxSpectrumGhostBusterCode(string name, int money)
    {
        if (money > 999900) return "999900 is max";
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(name) || name.Length > 20) return "Name is invalid (Max 20 characters)";
        name = name.PadRight(20);
        name = name.ToUpper();
        byte code = 0;
        var mon1 = uint.Parse((money / 10000).ToString(), System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber);
        var mon2 = uint.Parse((money / 100 % 100).ToString(), System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber);
        uint com = Math.Max(1, mon1 + mon2);
        foreach (char c in name) code += (byte)c;
        for (uint checksum; code-- > 0; com = checksum)
        {
            checksum = ((com << 1) + ((com >> 3 ^ com >> 7 ^ com >> 4 ^ com >> 7 ^ com >> 5 ^ com >> 7) & 1)) & 255;
        }
        var codeValue = (mon2 << 16) + (com << 8) + mon1;
        return Convert.ToString(codeValue, 8).PadLeft(8, '0');
    }
}

By larsthe18th

Master (189)

larsthe18th's picture

06-10-2019, 16:45

Thanks for your post Martijn,
Some files got corrupted (not hacked), replaced them and working again.